The New Partnership Model That Doubled One Blogger's Traffic And Profits

Tom Drake partners with blog owners to build their sites' profitability and then splits the profits. (Photo courtesy of Tom Drake)

The blog world draws many an entrepreneur aiming to marry a personal passion with the promise of advertising income. But what’s the best way to sustain a blog's growth and realize its full moneymaking potential?

Some blog owners do everything themselves at first, then hire staff if the blog grows enough to warrant the extra help. Others buy up existing web properties, owning them wholly and using them to build income or flip for a profit.

Tom Drake, owner of Drake Media, works a third model. He partners with blog owners to build site profitability and then splits the profits. Most of Drake's partners are writers who want to focus more on blog content and less on the "backend" work, such as maintaining the website, finding advertisers, and optimizing content for search engines. So Drake takes care of that; if all goes as planned, more money rolls in for everyone.

Partnership vs. Ownership

The new model wasn't Drake's idea. Retirement specialist Jim Yih wanted to improve his online presence, so he asked Drake to partner with him on a new site, Retire Happy. Drake's traffic and revenue expertise, and Yih's knowledge and writing ability, proved a formula for success.

In less than a year, Yih went from making $200 per month on his blog to making $3,000 a month. Drake benefited by pocketing a portion of the revenue.

Kevin Mercadante from Out of Your Rut also saw immediate benefits from partnering with Drake. Tired of running the backend for his site, Mercadante asked Drake to partner with him. The pair doubled site income and traffic in just a few months.

"Once your site is a couple years old, it accumulates a lot of garbage that holds it back," Mercadante said. "Tom is an expert at cleaning the crap out of a site, and that gets things moving quickly."

Drake also buys blogs outright. Sole ownership of these sites brings him 100 percent of the profits, but it also brings more responsibility. "It would become harder and harder to have unique branding with each solo project," he said. "I encourage the writers to mold the site in a way that makes it unique to them."

The partnerships, on the other hand, "are adding to my monthly income without the need for my time when it comes to writing posts or editing staff writers," he said."With these sites, I don't get as mired in the daily details. I can focus more on 'big picture' items."

Drake has four partners on eight sites. He fully owns another 15 sites, some of which have yet to launch.

About 40 percent of his gross online income comes through his partner sites. However, once he pays his partners, Drake said that his total is closer to 25 percent of his online income. He hopes to see that amount increase as his partner sites see greater success.

In order to partner with Drake, blog owners need to meet one crucial standard: They need to be able to write.

"I'm not a natural writer, and it can take me much longer to finish an article. It's not really the most efficient use of my time," he said. "These writers just want to write. They don't want to spend their time updating WordPress, following the latest Google algorithm changes, or figuring out how to monetize a site. These are things I can do to bring in more income for all of us."

Mercadante agreed. "I'm increasingly aware that we each need to do what we do best and turn the rest over to others,” he said. “I was becoming increasingly frustrated with handling the technical side of running a blog. I asked Tom about partnering in the hope of splitting the very distinct jobs of creating content and technical maintenance."

Drake aims to join forces with an increasing number of bloggers. "Two people working together can complement the other's skills, adding up to much more than the sum of their parts," he said.

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